Cruel Irony - Malec
by Bonnyellen
Summary: Futures are unpredictable. Magnus and Alec didn't expect Happily Ever After - how could they when Magnus will never grow old. All they wanted was the 'happily'. It would be a cruel irony if Alec were to lose the only two forever's in his life before he even had a chance to grow old.
1. Chapter 1: dreams

Magnus: i had always hated runes. The swirling intricacy of the delicate black lines that separated the angels from the humans, that defined a persons strength and ability, that bound two people together in such a beautifully cruel way. Brushing my fingers softly across the parabatai on Alecs lightly muscled arm as he slept peacefully in a circle of my arms, considering that it was as easy to separate the rune from its power with a single disfigurement as it is to separate a mortal soul from the body. I never resented Jace for his tie to my Alec, but the unbearable pain of knowing that there is no bond strong enough that could tether Alec to this world. Murmurming in his sleep, he rolled over in my arms to face me, his face inches from mine. I wanted to kiss him. But his mouth was twisted in a frightened grimace, closed eyes sealed tightly, flickering as if he were having a bad dream, and he flinched away from the fingers that touched his cheek, fitfully crying out. I held onto his restless, tattoed body, but no amount of soothing words or stroking his fine, inky black hair comforted his sleeping form.

"Alec, it's ok. Im here...' I willed him to wake out of the dream that trembled through his whole body. "Alec, i lov...'

"NO!" He cried, gasping, sweating, hauling himself up and me with him, until he sat with his head in his hand, tears streaming down his cheeks, shivering like ice had enveloped his heart. "Alec love," i cooed "it was just a dream. What happened? Your safe, love. Youre with me." At that, alexander turned his face up to mine. His liquid eyes were blue, wide, hopeful and desperately afraid, before he buried himself in my shirt, fists clenched around the material, his bare muscled flexed and strained as he soaked the cotten with silent tears. After what couldve been hours, i disentangled myself from his, raised his beautiful face to mine, long fingers gently lifting his chin, and instead of the words that always come so naturally, i simply lowered my mouth to his trembling lips and kissed them so gently, but the kiss deepened as alec stroked his arms down my back. Against my swollen lips he murmured "Never leave me, never let me be alone. Never be lonely, Magnus"

I gasped and felt my cat eyes gleam with unshed tears at the sincerity in his words.

"Alec, you are the only..."

"Please, no," his fingers laced through my hair "dont say it. Just promise me you will remember our love after..." After you die, i finished soundlessly...

"Alexander i have something I want to ask you." I breathed a shaky breath and took a chance.

/

Alec: In a circle of his gentle, long arms, i dreamed. I dreamed of an abandoned subway tunnel, worlds away from the life im living now, comfortable in the warlocks embrace.

Witchlight flickered and danced across the walls, as Magnus whispered in indonesia to me, and i dreamed of watching him disappear into the shadows and standing for a long time, watching the shimmering darkness. I knew subconciously that this was a memory, but as i fell into a deeper sleep, memories drifted into surrealistic dreams. I was walking down the tunnel, for what couldve been miles or a few meters, but soon enough i reached the end of the gloomy passageway, and light engulfed me as I strode out into the marble room with high ceilings, pale, glass floors and stone pillars. Against one of them lent a slim and elegant figure in a strapless red dress that empahsized the curvy body that did nothing for me. Blonde curls bounced around her shoulders, framing a face with cruel, beautiful eyes.

"Camille." It didnt sound like the cool, contained voice I had expected from myself, but more of a resentful accusation. Her smile widened to a harsh grimace. "Alexander, I hadn't expected to see you here so soon?" "Here?" I countered her patronisation with bitter anger, "you're dead Camille, Maureen killed you... And magnus loves me! You didnt win, stop smirking!" I shouted, ferious out her obvious glee to find that my subconscious had wondered here.

"You think you won, my dear Alexander, but there can only be so many winners of the same game. You forget that for more years than you have lived yet, I had Magnus, and is he not the prize?" She leant forward, pressed her cool, pulseless forhead to mine, and cupped my cheek. I flinched away from her touch, simply because where her icy fingers touched me, I felt the life pour out of me. I cried out as she grasped both my cheeks, her vampire grip like a vise as years seeped out of me. I felt old and tired and alone. "You are trivial, my dearest Alexander, like every other mortal. You will die, soon. He will go on and love another. Traivial and forgotten." Her luminous eyes were as unforgiving as snakes. I began to crumble away, crumble until nothing was left of me, the words trivial and forgotten ringing in my ears like the wind on a stormy day. I thought of gleaming cat eyes, and breathed my last shaking breath...

And woke up in Magnus's apartment. Magnus's bed. Magnus's arms. I let him hold me for a while, just until i was convinced i wasnt about to disintergrate like my dream, the words still singing in my mind... Trivial and forgotten, trivial and forgotten, trivial and forgotten.


	2. Chapter 2: beautiful simplicity

Magnus: i traced my long fingers over the grooves of fine, beautiful muscles covering Alecs stomach, my head resting in the crook of his neck. We had sat together like this since I told told him i had something to ask him. Neither of us had uttered a word since, and i was content to lean against the steady, gentle and strong boy with the blue eyes, his hands stroking my back softly, sending shivers down my spine. I breathed him in, his fingers slipping down my back like raindrops, sliding them around the waistband of my boxers. Groaning with pleasure, I pulled his perfectly curved mouth onto mine and we collided in a tangle of bodies, tongues, teeth and lips. Mouth on neck, mouth on chest, mouth on cheek. Mouth on mouth. Against my cheek his lips formed the words "what did you want to ask me?", and I closed my eyes, unlatched myself from him, all but our laced fingers, and lay down, watching with yearning eyes as he elegantly stretched himself out next to me, so close, and yet only our foreheads and fingertips brushed together, as if we could distance our hearts, to prevent them from being broken.

I always told myself someday i'd let go, and give my heart to oportunity to break. I didnt want to distance myself anymore. Resting my hands on the small of his back I pulled him closer and closer until the only barrier between us was skin, and his heart hammered against mine. "Alexander, don't ever close yourself off to me. I'll always be your infinite, and I love you. Aku cinta kamu, remember? Are we forever?" His breath caught in his throat, a hiccup of emotions that made my mind splutter like a useless car engine. "My alec, will you marry me...?" I swore at my self, the pathetic, run down car engine I am, for the effect this boy had on me, and how with him, the words that flowed like eloquant waterfalls out my mouth normally, were reduced to stammering and speechlessness. He deserved romance, and awe, and a proposal that swept him off his feet...

"Which forever? Yours or mine, Magnus?" I gasped involuntarily at the brutality in his voice and pulled myself away from him reluctantly, but he was already rolling with cat like grace out of the bed, chucking unceremonisously on a moth bitten jumper... "Alec..?" I breathed. He turned to me before he reached the door, haloed im the light around him, saphire eyes flickering in the dancing glow of the dark.

"Magnus... I... I need to think" the scarf wound around his neck like a viper, strangling him, emphasized his fair skin and liquid eyes as he turned and flew out the apartment, before I had even enough time to throw myself at the closed door, enjoying the pain shooting up my shoulder, slide down to the floor, only to find I had no tears to cry.

/

Alec: beautiful simplicity. Something few people could associate with the high warlock of Brooklyn, but how could anyone contradict the simple beauty of the proposal I just recieved. Yet here engulfed in the dancing darkness of the new york, summer night, a single sentance chased the joy i shoud be feeling around my mind like a cat and mouse: trivial and forgotten. I had stopped at Takis but just briefly, the noise making me feel like i've gone through a blender backward. A stunning faerie boy with fiery hair and dark, mahogany eyes had flashed me a smile, teeth pointed as razors. A warlock girl, silver and blue with flowers for hair hummed a lullaby, in which the words were based around war.

Sitting alone on the steps of the institute, no longer a home for me, in the dead of the starry night, i contemplated how everything in Magnus's life was fickle, desposible and ever changing, and how could I be a permenant part of someone whom I will always be tempory to's life? When had everything breathtaking in my life developed an ironic cruelty or brutal honesty?

A groaning, distinctive murmur of the institute doors opening sounded behind me, but i didnt turn. I knew he was coming, because he was reliable, understanding, strong and forever. My forever.

"Did magnus blow up the apartment with excessive use of blue fire?" Jace's amused, cool voice sounded by my ear, as he settled himself down next to me. "How did you know I was diwn here?" I asked, desperate to avoid a certain conversation about a certain warlock.

Gesturing toward the empty bottles of booze scattered at my feet, "i heard the symphony of relationship drama; the clink of beer bottles, exxagerated sighing and the clicking of you checking your phone to see if he called" his smile was genuine, but his eyes sympathetic.

"So did magnus actually blow up the apartment with excessive use of blue fire?" He repeated. Sighing, I gave myself over to my emotions and allowed myself to be comforted by my brother. "Close," i started "he proposed to me. But how can we talk about a lifetime together when im only a chapter of his?"

Jace smiled at me with his compassionate, golden eyes and whispered "we are bound together, me and you, by a rune that will fade when death separates us, but never leaves our skin completely. I suppose it depends if you believe carrying the mark the other person left on you all your life, remembering the joy and love, is worth the pain of being separated. I would never choose to be anything but your parabatai, no matter how much it could hurt to be without you, and I believe the mark you have left on Magnus's heart will stay with him forever. His forever. Go home Alec." He grinned and without another word, glided back into the institute. And i went home. Home.


	3. Chapter 3: an angels advice

Magnus: decades ago, in a small room in Paris, i held a weeping Tessa, sobs shaking us both, her because she truly believed she had lost both her loves, and I because thr reality of immortality amd its curses had cloaked me, surrounded me and was such a heavy weight to bear. I had always believed myself to be stronger, because of this but now, I understood. I understood that I could have never caried the burden of endless life alone, and it was him, my only anchor to the world, holding me up when i thought i would crumble. It was alexander, or simply the idea or memory of him that saved me, when I found myself closing myself down like an abandoned theme park, and only when he walked into my party, that beautiful night, and looked at me with his beautiful eyes, did I feel the ice around myself thaw.

The apartment I sat in now, swarmed by the the ghosts that clouded my memories, seemed empty and unappealing, a cone without ice creeam, if you will. I hadnt moved, still as stone, since Alexander had flown out our house, my back resting against the door, breath puffing out in shallow, desperate gasps, and my subconcious drifted like smoke, to a violin, singing sweet music, canines like a cat's in a blood red mouth, smiling radiently. Olive green fingers, interlocked with my dark skinned ones, twisting horns emerging from snow white hair. 2 children grinning up at me, eyes, the same stormy blue grey as their mothers, glowing up at me through dark lashes. And finally, desert landscapes, a holding cell, lung sunken and heavy in my chest, tearful eyes, the colour of waves breaking the shore, looking down at me and strong arms around me, as I tried to keep breathing. Desperately trying to think of a memory worse than the pain that gripped my chest like a corset now, i faded into blissful oblivion, thinking only of the cruel beauty and magic in the world, and slept. I slept for a very long time, because waking up seemed pointless if there was no one to wake up with you.

/

Alec: heart trapped in my throat, which I told myself - unconvincingly - was because i had run up 7 flight of stairs, and stared at the door and caught my fluttering breath, until i pushed open the only barrier between me and home. There was an unexpected pressure against the door, and I coud only open it a crack, squeacking hinges. Inwardly appreciating the lean, body I had (jace wouldve never been able to fit through the tiny gap with his exaggerated muscles), i slipped in side, quiet as a cat, even without the soundless rune, and stared. Magnus lay in a scrawled, crumpled heap of golden-brown, smooth skin and pyjammies against the door, face expressive even in this deep sleep, face alight with a sleeping, uncommonally honest smile.

Reluctantly, i knelt down beside his lanky form, and shoke him gently awake. Cat eyes glanced adorably sleepy up at me, his lips forming a string of words i didnt think would be bearable to hear, 'Alec, get out of here.' 'Alec, how could you refuse my proposal.' 'Alec, you are trivial, and i will forget', so instead I pulled him up to me, crashing my lips down to his with the clumsy, passion that was all I had to offer. His fingers wove their way through my hair, his graceful body arching up to mine, bellybuttonless skin hard and safe to touch. I kissed him for a long time, tongues exploring mouths, and hands drawing patterns on each others skin. His fingers looped around my waistband and pulled me away, slitted eyes devoted and questioning. "Magnus, please," i shoke with fear "if you don't want to be together, I understand. I wouldnt forgive me for running out like that either, but if you still love me..."

"My alexander, that fact you thought I would no longer love you, only proves young and perfectly innocent you are. Why though? Why come back?" I smiled a secret smile.

"My guardian angel told me you would be worth dying for." I answered with beautiful simplicity.

"I knew it," smirked magnus " i knew jace was in love with me. Herondales, and there awful habit of falling for their parabatai's fiance." Pushing him playfully, i countered "dont flatter yourself, he was talking about love, not you specifically... Never mind yourinflated ego... And fiance?" I breathed, the realisation hitting me like a welcomed ton of bricks. Instead of answering, he pulled me down into a kiss unlike any other, soft and tender and the sound of a butterfly's wings fluttering. Against me, i felt his lips break into a gentle, radient smile, his mouth speaking the words inbetween painfully wonderful kisses; "now you will have to marry me, Alexander, as i very much wish to be woken up like this every morning." And we held onto each other as dawn broke, light seeping in through the windows of our home, beautiful and simple.


	4. Chapter 4: wedding

Alec: the tent was white. White and elegant, and where a wedding was about to proceed. I had never met another person who made me feel as light as air, or enchanted me to the point of breathlessness. None like Magnus, who i loved so much it was painfully beautiful.

But, crouching in the lavendar bush across the green from the marquee, cold and numb, the memory of a dream, where high marble ceinging touched the sky, and camille taunted me with unforgiving bitterness, consumed me like a wave.

I felt the touch on my shoulder, soft, without even registering anyone was behind me, and jumped shakily, as Magnus settled himself down gracefully, his pristine white suit rustling amongst the flowers. He took me all in, eyes dancing, for he had always seen me better than i or anyone else had. His gaze brushed from my nervously flickering eyes, to my unbuttoned, crisp whit shirt, no jacket, and my plain black trousers, and finally, his cat eyes gleaming with amusment, my bare feet.

"I hope, alexander, you are not getting cold feet." He chirped in his silky voice, vowels lilting, because of his accent, like flowers. The hiccup chocked my throat, an embarrasing mixture of a stunned laugh and disbelievement. I remember Izzys wedding, and how she had marched with me up isle (demanding it was I that gave her away, after Father died in the night scout) with a devoting confidence about the love she felt for the boy with the oversized glasses, curling brown hair and inked skin. The boy that had stole Isabelles unbreakable heart, with heroic words and unmovable love. The boy that had once held her, gently, sharp, feline canines kissing the skin on her neck. Not that he would be biting her anymore, alec thought ruefully... At least not in the conventional sense... She had not been afraid. They vowed, they kissed, they danced and they never wavered. He still looked at her like she captured the sun, and hid it in her soul.

"Magnus, ive never wanted anything so much in my whole life. You at night. You in the morning. You everyday, for the rest of forever. I want it so much, it terrifies me. Youre my forever, but..." Im not yours, i finished mentally, registering now why i was cold; my cheeks were damp, tears sprinkled down my cheeks like morning dew.

"Love, what is this really about?" And I told him, because he was the only one i could tell. I told him about the dream of Camille pulling the life out of my body, and I told him about the conversation with Jace many nights ago on the steps of the institute, and of how, even as i cries when my fathers body was burnt, I heard people at the funeral, whispering almost inaudibly about the embarrasement Robert mustve felt, having a gay son. When i finished, the sky was the same golden, in the setting sun, as Magnus's sad eyes. He laced our fingers together, and with his spare hand, cupped my neck gently and lowered my face to his chest. The musically steady drum of his heart beat against my wet cheek. I closed me eyes. "Hear that, Alec? Every beat before i met you belonged to you, and every beat from now until the end of forever is for you. It doesnt matter to me how we choose to show the world this," he began to glide towards the tent, fingers still interlocked, fading sunlight twinkling like flames in his silky black hair, "through a rune, or a golden ring or simply a vow. All i know is i am grateful for every moment with you." And he grinned.

Later on, after the ceremony, after jaces fingers manipulating the keys of the piano to make them sound like angels were singing, after I danced with Isabelle, flickering in her orange gown like a candle, and kissed Magnus for the first time, after saying my vows, I sat comfortably in a corner of the tent, watching my husband waltz with a giggling..ever so slightly drunk Clary, and an ever so very drunk Isabelle's head resting on my lap, where she had passed out, unsurprisingly. Stroking her hair, listening to the soft music and watching as the dancers glided and twirled like smoke from fire, I understood what Jordan had meant, when many years ago now, his smiling, honest voice had cooed to jace, and he had spoke of peace..

/

An indignant pair of pale turquoise eyes stared up at me, dark frows furrowing in agitation. His honey golden skin glowed in the light given off by the lamp on their sitting room table, and for one second, I found myself as disorientated as a star at midday, still stuck in a world of crystal white tents and lavender...

"Honestly, you were halfway through the story of yours and Daddy's wedding, and you know its my FAVOURITE," the emphasis and sincerity in his obviously annoyed voice gave me the ridiculous urge to chuckle, ridiculous because i knew how that would infuriate this little tornado of a boy, "and you just fell asleep!... Daddy, the chairman wanted to redesign the curtains with his claws. You were asleep. Dad is out, and I personally think the curtains look better now..." "Max Raphael Lightwood! You know very well chairman Meow is not a real estate agent..."

My son threw up his arms in a expressive manner, currently uncontained blue fire crackling from his fingertips, "oh pleeeeease dont be angry with me. I love you soo much. I love...ooh daddys home! Do you think he bought me back the comic i wanted?" At the sound of Magnus - who had been out with Isabelle all day on what he explained was a 'shopping extranveganzer of clothes, glitter and expense - his keys rattling in the door, the boy scrambled out and bounded with the clumsy grace only a 4 year old could have, and hurtled himself into the warlocks arms as he strode through the door, glittering in a velvet sweater, as he kissed Max ontop of his head of dark spikes, supporting him with arm in the crook of his elbow, the other arm reaching for my hand. He dropped me a kiss full of promise of what was to come when Max was tucked up and sleeping, and whispered in my ear, the most beautiful sounding, indonesian word i forever loved to hear him say 'aku cinta kamu'. Slinging me a smile, that even after 5 years of marriage still made me feel like my insides were made out of sugar, he strode out the room, towards the baby's bedroom, baby still tucked neatly into his arm, head on Magnus's shoulder. As they dissapeared down the hall, i listened to the soft sound of Magnus cooing max to sleep, max's musical laughter emminating through my body like a second heart bead. I closed my eyes, and listened.


	5. Chapter 5: Max Raphael Lightwood

Magnus: When i looked at him, I still saw the young boy with the excruciatingly beautiful blue-green eyes and the expressive quirks of his features playing across his angelic face, kissed by the sun. The young man who pushed past me in furious haste no longer fitted into the crook of my elbow like a perfectly executed pair in a jigsaw, and he could no longer fall asleep on Alec's chest as my husband stroked his curling black hair tenderly. As the door slammed shut behind Max, after the daily, explosive and heated argument, which usually resulted in burnt skin and burning eyes, tension crackling like blue fire, tempting the hateful, hurtful words out each others mouths. I glared at the door in blank astonishment, until i felt Alec's trembling hand on my shoulder, a safety net, and anchor holding me together when I thought I might evaporate in the heat of confrontation. his strong, delicate hands pulled me round in his arms and raised my chin. kissing his fingers, rough to my lips, more so than when i had kissed the boy for the first time 20 years ago, when he was just 17. He had maintained the same beautiful innocence and vulnerability as he had then, and I knew i would never notice his blue eues dull, or his milky, translucent skin pale. He would always be the boy who captured my heart and destroyed the keys.

"He's just having a hard time, Magnus. The more you question where he was, the more he'll choose to leave... " Looping his finely muscled arms under my shoulder blades, stroking my back, the place an angel's wing's would have been, he rested his head on my shoulders, messy, ink black hair tickling my exposed neck. I layed my palms squarely against the firm stomach underneath the barrier of cotton, and after several moments as peaceful as violin music in 18th centuary london, I pushed him away with such force, the ground beneath him slid and his usually graceful feet tripped and fell, his eyes enormous ad brimmed with hurt and surprised frustration. Both mentally and sarcastically, I congratulated myself, for my son hated me, and whatever problems he faced, he wouldnt share the burden with, and faced them alone; and now my Alexander, strewn across the floor... I can only imagine what he thought of me. Consumed by self loathing, I stalked past his sprawled figure on the landing floor, pausing only to utter righteously 'No surprise, Alexander. Everyone i choose to love chooses to leave.' At the sound of his sharp, in drawn breath, I dived out the apartment, the same door Max-Raphael had dashed through minutes before. Alec lay on the soft, cold, mahogany floor, not crying and not feeling, alone and numb until morning light broke through the window, and the sound of the key turning, and a boy gliding like smoke into their home, wrenched him to his feet, moments before a tearful Max rocketed into Alec's outstretched arms, blurting between shaking gasps, the events of that night...

Max-Raphael: the new york night air on my face was like a christaning, a separate life from the world i lived in by day, as i wove my way through downtown brooklyn, wind ruffling my hair like it were curling silk. I had reached the house, the haven in the rat infested alleyway opposite the subway station, and thumped my fist in two steady beats and 4 quicker half beats, a ryhme that granted me immediate access to the club.

The pixie girl who opened the door rolled her eyes at me as I sauntered in, red eyebrown raised in question 'another fight with you parent, Raph?' Her eyes asked me, but i spared her only the briefest nod before emerging myself further into the house. It was not anything like the pandemonium or any downworlder or nephilim establishment, but a safe place for those who didnt belong to the shadow or day world, and amalgamation of shadowhunters and the downworld community; warlocks who prostituted the powers for the highest price, vampires and werewolves without a a clan or pack. A shadowhunter with anger issues and 2 dads. Here i recieved no disapproving or smikry glares, and glided through the crowd of misfits and unappreciated brilliance, passing Maylyn Lewis - my estranged cousin, who at only 16 had the beauty to comand supernovas to collide, and insane cruelty that could drive boys into an adoring madness - sitting amongst a crowd of enchanted faerie's of the unseelie court. She was here, simply because of the accident when her father drank from the mortal cup, which led to a 'taint' in her blood.

My gaze licked across the smoky, gloomy room, where lycanthropes played cards and vampire girls flirted mercilessly with the unwanted nephilim boys, until it rested upon the pearly blond head of closely cut hair, tufting around her jawline like fine, silvery waves, her figure hunched over a bottle of whiskey.

Grace Starkey, the adoptive mundane daughter of a shadowhunter family who had trained her all her life for ascension. The girl who I watched for years after the first time i came to 'the club', distancing myself but always intrigued. When she had asked me for a sip of my drink 2 months ago, i had pounced the opurtunity to talk to her. She told me how she loved the feel of a blade in her hands, and of how her adoptive parents had thrown her out, and how her home was here, because if she belonged anywhere, it was with people who dont belong. She told me that her dying wish was to be a shadowhunter. And i belived her. Because, despite how angry it made me... I loved her.

I loved that she forever had beautiful stories to tell me, and I could watch the glowing light of the room flicker in her amber eyes as she conclude each fairytale.

Today, as i settled myself down next to her, she turned her eyes up to me, and they glistened with unshed tear, and all i could do was sit stiffly, awkwardly, confused by how to carry on the interaction between us, but she laughed, her face lighting up like witchlight.

"I have a real story for you today. Its about illness and happiness and unwanted people wanting each other. Its about how i fell in like with you, and the truth about why my parents threw me out like discarded trash. Its about how i'll never ascend, because im dying, max..."

She was the only one here who didnt't call me Raphael. She called me Max. The only person who saw the me i tucked away from the world, hidden deep inside layers of irony and cool detatchment, was going to die.


	6. Chapter 6: angels will fall

Grace: the shadow world was dangerous. My adoptive parents had at least bought me up well enough to teach me that, before unrelentingly chucking me out into the cruel, dark world. A world with delicate fangs, intricately designed to rip out pretty throats where steady pulses drummed, where the moon rips through people and turns them into a beast, where demons slunk to even the furthest shadows that covered this universe. I had considered dying young. It seemed probable.

I just hadn't considered dying so young I never got to swing my own seraph blade.

Hadn't considered dying from a terminal disease.

Ironic really, isn't it, adamantly believing my whole life I wasn't going to have an ordinary existence, that I was special, training excessively my whole life, working to be better than other nephilim kids, developing Sight, only to be mercilessly cut down by a mundane disease. Hilarious.

Glaring coldly at the bottom of my empty scotch glass, willing it to shatter into a million jagged pieces, like my lungs we threatening to do, clogged with smoke and unoxygenated in the smoky gloom of The Haven, I felt the breath on my next and shivered inwardly, the bitter self loathing numbing to quite wistfulness, an image of the life I could've had, runed, happy, married to the boy with the stormy sea eyes. His trench coat rustled as he slid onto the stool next to me, and the choking heat in my lungs cried out as it always did when we were close, reminding me cruelly of the unrelenting tumours spreading across my insides. After moments of heavy silence, I turned my velvety gaze up to meet his flashing blue eyes, hooded by thick, ebony lashes, faked a smile and began to recited the story he liked to hear me tell, about pain training caused me as the tumours started to develop , and the way my parents had thrown me out after diagnosis, claiming they only wanted a child if they would become a shadowhunter, and how I found my way here, through an interesting argument I had with a lycanthrope when I had nowhere to live, about who had more flees; a girl living in a gutter, or a man who turned into a slobbering, stinking mutt once a month. Don't get me wrong, I've got nothing against werewolves, but it's hard to be kind to a creature basically immune to disease as he laughed at me for choking out the remainder of my mundie life, hooked onto the tank of air i carted around in my backpack. Long story short, after a brief fight in the street, I lost every ounce of breath and collapsed, and the lycanthrope, God damn him, dragged me semiconscious into the club where they gave me a bed and food, and it has been a home to me since.

He watched me with calculating, mysterious glances, weighing down on me like lack of air as I finished my story, and in the silence that followed, he lent across and adjusted the pipes latched to my nose, and brushed his fingers across my cheek, before reeling back, my touch apparently burning him and turning his beautiful face away from me.

"Your killing me Grace."

"That's progress! Killing someone besides myself is rare" at the he turned around, eyes wide and more scared than I had ever seen them, haunted and painfully blue. Faster than my eyes could fathom, he grasped both sides of my face in his rough gentle hands, desperately, watching my mouth as he breathed desperate words;

"Dont you understand? Do you think I come here because I'm half shadowhunter and warlock, because I'm not accepted by the clave? No, that's why I fit in here, in a sea of misfits, but I come here because I am in love with you. Since I first realised how much stronger you were than any angel, and made me realise that there are more important things than saving the world.'

I gasped and spluttered, my vision distorted by dancing shadows and mocking black dots, as oxygen struggled to race through my body. Strong arms supported me as I stumbled off the stool, and I let Max gently guide me out of the clouded, crowded room, towards the accommodation wing of The Haven, towards room 9. My bare, practical room. I let Max's arms lower my unresisting, limp, under oxygenated body onto the plain white sheets.

But instead of letting go, I pulled him softly ontop of me where, he rested, awkward on his elbows, resitant to putting pressure on my, convinced I would either snap or loose the breath that was already slowing to regular rate in my lungs.

As if to tell him how much I wanted this, I lent up to his face, millimetres from mine, eyes wide and anxious, shadows chasing shadows across his angelic features, I pressed my lips softly and the explosively against his, and the rest came naturally, fingers ripping into the fabric of clothing, bare skin sliding frictionlessly against each other, my tubes tangled in his arm as we clumsily held each other, eyes never closing not for a second. When there was no barrier between us but skin, we stopped frantically exploring each other with longing touches, and lay there, my hand spread across the burn on his chest, his lips pressed firmly into the cascade of blonde hair tumbling across his stomach. The pain the usually tore through my body, emminating from my broken lungs subsided to the pure, honest ecstasy of being with Max-Raphael like this, so that I though my heart would explode, not from the disease, but from how desperately I wanted this more than I ever wanted anything, because I loved him more than anything, and there was no words I could say that would make it past my choked throat, so I simply looked up at him through gold and white eyelashes, remembering the way the dim light danced across his face, an unusual expression of open, unconfined happiness, and I was filled with joy, to have made this unbelievable boy smile again. I closed my eyes.

When we came together, I didn't need to open my eyes to know it was more beautiful that the angels themselves falling from the sky...

Max: I watched her bare, sleeping form, draped across me, all night. It was about 3 in the morning when she woke up with a shuddering gasp, that shook through me like an internal earthquake. Her eyes flew wide and frightened, before registering me lying beside her, her hand pressed softly against the drum of my heart, and her eyes softened. She bought our interlocked hands up to her perfect mouth, kissed my fingers lightly, closed her eyes and murmured "that was the most beautiful dream max-" then she smiled against our laced hands, breathed and fell asleep in a circle of my arms. She didn't wake up again...


	7. Chapter 7: A warlocks promise

Alec: when Magnus came home the morning after, and I told him I had stayed inside the apartment all night, I had not strictly been lying. If he had asked about people coming into the apartment, if he had asked if I had had any visitors come to our home, a place cracking under pressure like heated glass, that night... I would've straight up lied.

But he didn't. And I had been there when Max had tore through the door, like a time bomb was strapped to his chst and any second he might detonate, and hurled himself into my arms, eyes frantic and gleaming. I had recognised them as the same expression I had had many years ago, finding Magnus chained and dying in a world identical but alternate, a parallel realm. Only his eyes showed no glimmer of hope, broken and helpless.

The truth is, sometimes the truth can be stretched to preserve happiness of the people you love most in the world, and I would bend and mutate the truth like an elastic band to keep the hurt and bitter rage out of Magnus' eyes that crept up more and more often, and I would wind the truth into ringlets like a corkscrew so that my Max wouldn't push everyone who tries to love him away. But sometimes the truth was as solid as stone, unbendable and unfathomable as the sky exploding. And those truths are better buried deep.

And the unfathomable truth is that I will die. And they won't; I'm not complaining because ,I've never loved anything as much, and I'm thankful of every second that led to falling in love with Magnus, and every breath that I took, heaving a tiny Max, sprawled across my stomach, up and down as We slept.

But when the tall man with the lilac eyes and white hair sidestepped me as I ran back from the institute, many night ago, and slipped a message into my coat pocket, that when I read it, my heart contracted into folds, flimsy as paper, and my exploding sky shattered around me, and my unfathomable truth begin to crack, did I feel inclined to hope. So I replied to the message, following the warlocks instructions to leave the follow up, should I choose to follow up, in Madame Dorathea's apartment, Brooklyn. So after months of weighing the negatives and positives of what the warlock was offering, being pulled and pushed between desire and goodness, did I slip out the apartment a few day ago, announcing I was going to see Jace. This of course had been a bendable truth, because I had in fact swung by the institute, mumbling a few easy word for my brother and sister together about 'how me and Magnus were grand' which was about as buyable as crystal meth, before sidling up to Clary's old home, dropping a note in the ashy remains, remembering bleeding my life out in poisonous streams of blood on this floor. Somehow this still felt worse. It was not everyday and always a good thing when a stranger offers you the chance to live forever.

That had two and a half days ago. And I hadn't expected a reply, much less him in person, to arrive so soon, and as the portal began to bleed through the kitchen wall of the apartment, light sparking a swirling, blinding like the truths and half truths and bendable and fathomable truth that overran my mind, only one thought was illuminated against the jumble;

'By the angel Alec, you're still the same 17 year old boy. Wishing for the impossible' my mind held all the bitterness and resentment of the past that I told myself was buried deeper every day I got older. One thought bounced cruelly around my head...

'Alec, you haven't changed.'

Malcolm stepped through the shimmering mirror of the portal and smiled gleefully...

Magnus: I was about 7 blocks down the road, head hung low like a puppet with it, strings cut, rain running down my face like tears spilt from dry eyes, that I realised the coat I o on wasn't mine, but Alexander's. I realised this, because when I put my hand into the pocket of the long trench coat, my fingers rustled uncomfortably against a rough, scrambled piece of paper, scrunched into a ball. Unravelling it, I depicted 'Dear Alexander Lightwood-Bane,' in a italic script, that danced across the crumpled paper in it's vague familiarity. I lent against the hard stone of the warehouse building I was passing when I had become aware of the alecness of the mouth bitten coat I had aquired, focused my breathing on actually inhaling and exhaling, and read on...

After I finished, I closed my eyes. I felt my legs give out, and my back scratch against the wall as I slid slowly down, before collapsing onto my knees, head carelessly thrown back against the cold stone of the building, winding ripping through Alexander's coat, cutting through me like a knife...


	8. Chapter 8: die to live

Magnus: rain soaked through Alec's trench, through my skin, all the way down to my core, till I was numb and cold, but still the words of the letter in his pocket tore through me like a flicker of Izzy's whip. Rising flames were already licking the sky as dawn rose, when I wretched across the pavement by the side of the warehouse, and shakily got to my feet, hands still interwoven with my hair. After multiple deep breaths, the roar of my blood still hammering in my chest like a out of sync percussion band, I lowered my hands, looked at them. They were a mess of glitter, dirt sweat and tears, and an image of two laced hands; one with rings and sparkles, the other with chipped nails and black, inky, swirling lines, burned into my eyelids.

Two hands clinging to each other's warmth, two pairs of eyes seeing the world change, two lives intertwined forever. The vision sparked dramatically, blazing in front of my eyes before fading with what remained of my strength. Drained and lost, my feet seemed to be the first part of body to have some direction, and I didn't feel myself running until I soared out of the alleyway and the wind ripped through me like I was paper, as I took of through Brooklyn, sun seeping though the cracks of the skyline blood...

Alec: The icy looking man's smile was not unkind, but shivers ran through my spine, engulfing my body in a shocked numbness, as the last of the portal light bled through the kitchen wall, before disintegrating into nothingness... Much like a mortal life, I thought bitterly. He seemed to have barely registered me, taking in our simple kitchen with fascinated distance, but now his eyes, dancing with childlike amusement and curiosity came to rest squarely on me, his velvety eyes reading my pale blue ones. He really isn't anything like Magnus, I decided sourly, filled with a sudden, consuming rage at him, for suggesting this, and myself, for considering.

He sauntered up to me, and cupped my cheek in spidery fingers, his voice as velvety as his gaze;

"Ah, Alexander Gideon," his breath tickled my face and I resisted the urge to flinch away, "First of the known nephilim to have a relationship with a warlock. Are you surprised to know that the children of Lilith are none to pleased with you?" I kept my expression stony, but I felt the bitterness slither into my eyes. When I didn't answer, Malcolm smiled and carried on, relentless "You must know many of us believed you only wanted to sleep with Magnus, and not one of us expected your... Attraction to escalate as much as it has?" He spat the word 'attraction' out like it was poison on his tongue, a crack in his innocent manner. Anger bubbled up in my throat, and when I thought screams and cruel words would explode from my mouth, only tears erupted from my eyes, my expression still unreadable.

"And would what you're offering please you warlocks? Or did you come here just waste my time and piss off my husband. We both know he's not your biggest fan?"

"Well, I must say, I was told you were blunt. I didn't expect a knife with a square blade blunt." He picked up a salt shaker with mild interest, and without looking at me, carried on; "Yes I can offer you a chance to become immortal. But first, I wish to know, why a warlock? Why Magnus Bane?"

When I spoke my voice was a husky whisper, my vocal chords scraped and bruised with unsaid words;

"Everybody seems to spend theirs lives looking for someone to sleep with," Triumph was literally pouring out him, so convinced I was confessing to everything he accused me of-

"but I found someone I wanted to wake up with."

As quickly as the flash of rage crossed across his eyes, he composed himself, the bright, overhead light playing with shadows across his inhuman features.

"It was when your son was born, that I became inspired to study mortal and immortal live. Half nephilim, half warlock. Immortal, but a warrior. It got me thinking, that the soul is neither mortal nor is it immortal, but the body that has the ability to die or live. The blood. This is why vampires are immortal. They essentially have no soul, yet they always have blood, without it they cannot live." Simons face, bloodied, razor fangs cutting his lips, smiling down at my sister with so much love. He always had a soul I thought silently. "So after I slipped you that note, I began following your son, to see whether the half immortal was feelingless, and he led me right to the final piece of my experiment. A dying, mundane girl. Grace."

Then I remember. Max calling out in the cloaking darkness, calling out that name over and over as she slept restlessly, while I sat by his bed, Magnus' arms draped around me, but no comfort in them.

"We began meeting, and she swore by your angel she would not tell Max Raphael. She helped me realise that, in order to become immortal, the soul can be separated from the body through death, and the body will be given ageless blood...a warlocks blood, before the soul is placed back inside the now immortal body, and tah dah." He gazed at me smugly, like what he had said wasnt horrific.

"And you haven't even tested this? You are offering me immortality on the basis of some theory?" I countered, anger tinting my voice into an ugly yelp. The wind howled outside, shaking the apartments shutters, his smile as angelic and quietly powerful as the wind.

"Grace isn't going to live long. She's already agreed to let me try and save her. She says she wants to live. Very much. For your son. It is all that I am offering you, as well."

"You are offering to save me..." I breathed, realisation crashing and breaking over me like a wave, "but at what price?" His calm smile chilled me like frost bite.

"Your life, Alexander. You must die, to live."

3 hours and 37 minutes after the swirling portal closed after Malcolm, leaving me alone - not knowing where Magnus was - in my thoughts, the front door exploded open, and Max catapulted himself into my arms, sobbing, gasping, and in between, telling me how Grace

Starkey had died earlier that night.

Half my mind focused on stroking Max's inky, silky hair falling across his damp turquoise eyes, breathing comforting words. The other was on the vial of silver liquid, that Malcolm had given me before he disappeared into the whirlwind, bubbling furiously, hidden under the kitchen floorboards.

Half my mind was telling me that Grace had paid the price. Though it may have been for nothing.

Was I willing to gamble with my life, even if the prize was Magnus. Forever.

Was I willing to pay?


End file.
